Member Profile

Mark Orwoll is a veteran journalist who was on the editorial staff of Travel + Leisure for 30 years, most recently as the International Editor. He is now a hired gun (cue theme music from “Kojak”). Mark is the author of a travel memoir, “Just One Little Hitch” (Pleasant Villain Press, 2024), a thriller, “Cross Purposes (Pleasant Villain Press, 2023), a movie book, “John Wayne Speaks” (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2021) and a travel-planning book, “e-Travel” (SAMS/Macmillan; 2000), one of the first books about planning travel on the internet. He was an adjunct professor in NYU’s Master’s in Publishing graduate program, where he was honored with a Teaching Excellence award in 2015, and a feature-writing instructor at Mediabistro. He has appeared on television over 500 times as a travel expert, including more than 75 interviews on NBC’s TODAY show, a weekly “Getaway Day” segment on CNBC’s Power Lunch for five years, and spots on every major broadcast and cable network over the past two decades. He has been a keynote speaker, presenter, emcee, moderator, and panelist at dozens of public and industry events in the U.S. and abroad. While he was at Travel + Leisure, Mark simultaneously served as the Executive Editor of Time Inc.’s International Licensing & Development group, under whose auspices he launched licensed editions of Departures, Food & Wine, and/or T+L in Russia, Mexico, Japan, Southeast Asia, Australia, Germany, South Korea, and Turkey. He has traveled to 95 countries and filed stories from most of them. Mark is married with three grown children. In his spare time, he is a home-recording-studio enthusiast and plays a mean mandolin.